Shortages: Is 'peak oil' idea dead?

[Cloud9]

I’m with Pops. We are in the decline. That decline may very well trip up the system.



http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/upload ... de_Off.pdf

[Pops]

Thanks for the link Cloud9, I like those guys at feasta. 'Like' probably isn't the right word, their Tipping Points paper is the most convincing overnight collapse scenario I've read... so far.

[Cloud9]

Pops, I think the key point is this bit: “There is an acknowledged risk that we are now at the peak of global oil production. That is, the amount of affordable oil that can be brought on stream in real-time time is hitting constraints and will decline. Economic and complexity growth are predicated on rising and adaptive energy flows. Constraints on energy flows that cannot be substituted affordably, adaptively, and in real-time, are expressed through constraints on economic activity. If the global economy cannot grow and starts to contract, feedback processes drive further contraction. A contracting economy is incompatible with the credit backing of the globalized economy and the value of all financial assets because it undermines the ability to service debt in real terms. Monetary stability, bank solvency, intermediation and credit are all dependent upon confidence in continuing credit expansion and rising economic activity. That is, the financial and monetary systems that we have come to take for granted were adaptive within a particular set of conditions. When those conditions change, the financial and monetary system keystone-hub may slip out of its historical equilibrium.

…all those changing conditions need to do is drive the globalized economy, or keystone-hubs within it, out of their stability domain, after which the system’s internal interdependencies come out of synch with what they have adapted to and the system can be at risk of collapse. The speed of that collapse is related to the levels of integration and complexity in the system.

One of the effects of massive credit over-expansion and/or the peaking of global oil production is the growing risk of a global systemic financial shock. The likelihood, as with so many financial crises of the past, is that the breakdown of the global financial system will be sudden and catastrophic, marked by complacency and hope turning to fear and panic. It would happen over hours and days.”

http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/upload ... de_Off.pdf

[dinopello]

Another un-con-vert

Pssst, I Heard this Rumor that There’s an Oil and Gas Boom in the U.S.

I myself was a believer in “peak oil,” or at least a modified form of it. Although I had enough faith in market dynamics to know that higher oil prices would stimulate more oil production and that we weren’t going to “run out” of oil any time soon, I did think that demand from China, India and other developing countries would swamp any marginal increases in oil production that the energy sector could manage. I expected oil prices to hit a new, higher plateau — and I certainly didn’t expect a massive rebound in North American production. Well, I was wrong, and I’m honest enough to admit it.

[Pops]

Well, look at the headlines:

U.S. "tight oil" output to double by 2035: EIA
The U.S. government published its first official forecast for booming "tight oil" production on Monday, estimating that shale formations such as the Bakken in North Dakota will more than double output in the next two decades.

Buried way down:

The EIA expects tight oil to account for 20.5 percent of the 5.99 million bpd of the total it expects will be produced in the United States. The 2035 figure is lower than earlier estimates.

But wait! Oil is BOOMING! Output to DOUBLE!